I snorted. “When am I not?”
“Tsk. That boy.” She shook her head, eyes bright with humor and affection. “He’s certainly going out of his way to piss you off.”
I gave a huff of laughter. “And I bet you think that’s deserved.”
“Well, you did ambush him at a photo shoot and once again in his office.”
My suspicions were correct: Caine told the old bird everything! Intrigued, I leaned forward. “How did you and Caine become friends?”
“Caine, is it?” She threw me a cheeky smile.
“Mr. Carraway,” I corrected myself, holding her steady gaze and refusing to give anything away.
She chortled. “You can call him Caine, sweetheart. He’s not a god.”
“Do you think you could tell him that? Because I don’t think he knows.”
Mrs. Flanagan threw her head back in laughter. “Oh, Caine was right. You are a smart-ass.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I can’t help it. He brings it out in me.”
“Well, I can see how that might happen, what with him trying to piss you off every chance he gets even though he says he’s not.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do with that boy.”
“I can take it,” I assured her. “I get it.”
“You do?” She raised an eyebrow. “Because I don’t think you do. I don’t even think Caine gets it yet.”
“It’s about our history. About my father and his mother.” I was suddenly suspicious. “I thought you knew all this.”
“Oh, I know all about that, and I know it’s not your fault, so get that out of your head right now.”
“I know it’s not my fault, but I get why it’s hard for Caine to separate me from it,” I admitted. “He’s been through so much because of my father and what he did to destroy Caine’s family. I guess it would make me feel better if I could see Caine happy. He deserves to be happy, even when he is being a grumpy, relentless, unbending pain in the ass.” I took a sip of tea. “Did you meet Phoebe?”
Mrs. Flanagan seemed amused by the question. “Oh no. I’ve never met any of Caine’s lady friends. But Caine told me about her.”
“She was perfect for him. He just dumped her,” I huffed. “I do not understand that man.”
“Well, from what I heard she was all wrong for him.”
Shocked, intrigued, I leaned forward. “What did you hear?”
She laughed at my curiosity. “Phoebe was intimidated by him. She downplayed her intelligence around him. Drove him nuts.” She leaned forward, her eyes boring into mine with a fierceness I didn’t quite understand. “What Caine needs is a woman who is not easily intimidated, persistent, and pretty much okay with bulldozing her way into his life. That’s how I struck up my friendship with him. I wouldn’t let him take no for an answer, and now that boy is the closest thing I have to a grandson and I’m the closest thing he has to a grandmother.”
Uneasiness moved through me. “Maybe he wouldn’t want us talking, then. Especially about private stuff.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” She gave me a knowing look. “You’re digging for some reason. Otherwise you wouldn’t be spending your Saturday afternoon with your boss’s kooky neighbor lady.”
I gave her a sad smile. “Maybe I have nowhere else to be.”
Mrs. F looked concerned. “Okay, if that’s true, why haven’t you got anywhere else to be?”
“My social circle grew smaller when I lost my former job. My friends from college all have kids now and …” I shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“Alexa, you’re a gorgeous, funny young woman. You should either be able to strike up friendships with other charming women or have a man on your arm showing you a good time at the weekend.”
A man on my arm. Right. “I haven’t had one of those in eighteen months and haven’t even been interested in looking since my mom passed.”
She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “I’m sorry about your loss, sweetheart. Caine told me about it after he looked into you.”
What the hell? “Caine looked into me?”
“Yeah. After the photo shoot. Found out your mom had just passed. Boating accident, was it? How are you coping with all that? You okay? It must be tough trying to deal with her loss now that you’re having to deal with Caine.”
To my surprise everything rushed up within me at Mrs. F’s genuine sympathy. It was like she really wanted to know, and I guess I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I needed someone to care. “You know I haven’t been able to talk about it because no one knows the truth about what my father did. The only one who does is Grandpa, and he rarely talks about it. He doesn’t want to.”
She squeezed my hand. “Well, I know the truth. You can tell me.”
I smiled gratefully and put my other hand over hers. “Thanks, Mrs. F.”
She smiled encouragingly.
“I guess …” I exhaled. “It’s been rough because of all the resentment I carried toward Mom.” I went on to tell Mrs. F all about how much I hero-worshipped my absentee father as a kid, and how I clung to that for as long as I could and when I couldn’t anymore I just pretended. “But he shot that to hell when he told us the entire truth. It was Thanksgiving. I was home from college. He sat us down, and he cried as he told us about Caine’s mom. And all his secrets came out because of that. I found out I had been illegitimate, that he’d had a wife and son that I knew nothing about, that my mom was just his piece on the side until he had nowhere else to go after his father turned him away. I was disgusted, betrayed, ashamed. Mom was just quiet. Of course she’d known all about the other family, but she knew nothing of Caine’s mother or how he’d let her die, or even how that was the real reason he’d come back to her. I asked Mom what she was going to do, if she would leave him over it, and she told me she didn’t know. She was shaken up and I had hoped that maybe it would be enough to make her see him for who he really was. My mom spent my entire life giving that man everything he wanted, and he never once tried to give back. I couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true anymore.
“So after a while, after I realized that he felt guilty but not repentant, I told him I didn’t forgive him. I returned to college … and unfortunately Mom went back to him.” I looked up from our hands, tears stinging my eyes as that familiar hurt clawed at my gut. “She put him before me from that moment on. It was always my fault that there was a rift. Never his. I saw her only a couple of times over the last few years, and there was this wall between us we couldn’t breach.” I swiped at the tears sliding down my cheeks. “And then one day she went out on her friend’s boat and a storm hit and that was it. She went overboard and by the time they found her body she was gone. She’s gone and I never made it right. But neither did she.” And it hurts.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. F sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
“I … I keep remembering when I was a kid and it was just the two of us. She was my whole world, you know. I’ve never loved anyone the way that I loved her back then. And now I’m just so goddamn mad at her. And I guess when I walked onto that photo shoot weeks ago and saw Caine, it was an opportunity to focus on something, anything, but the fact that my mom is dead and the most powerful feeling I have toward her is anger. I’m just scared that forgiveness and acceptance might never come.”
Without another word, Mrs. F got up from her seat and came around to me to pull me into her arms, and for the first time since Mom died, I really and truly let it all out.
A bunch of tissues and two more cups of tea later, I smiled gratefully at Mrs. F. “This is going to sound weird, but thank you.”
“For what, sweetheart?”
“For listening.” I shrugged. “I feel lighter somehow, like it helped just to admit my anger out loud. I tried to talk to Grandpa about it a while ago, but he just got so mad and then he let slip Caine’s name and everything else was shoved to the side at that revelation.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t have a good shoulder to
cry on at the time.” Mrs. F actually looked mad about it. “But you can come to me anytime, sweetie. Everybody needs somebody.”
“Very true. I’m glad Caine has you.”
Curiosity entered her gaze. “You really do want him to be happy, don’t you?”
The way she asked it made me wary, like my answer held more meaning than I wanted it to. Finally, though, I nodded.
“Good. Maybe with two of us on the job we’ll get it done.” She glanced over at the clock. “Oh, look at that, it’s dinnertime. And I know the number for a great Chinese. Join me? I have wine.”
I laughed. “I would love that.”
“Fabulous.” She stood up. “Oh, and, Alexa?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re allowed to be mad at your mom, sweetheart.”
Before I could swallow past the sudden lump in my throat long enough to thank her, Mrs. F strode away, caftan fluttering behind her, into the hall. I heard her on the phone before she appeared less than a minute later clutching her cell and a menu.
She thrust the menu at me. “Choose what you want. Caine’s already told me what he wants.”
Um … “Caine?”
“Yeah.” She grinned impishly. “He just finished a squash game at the gym and is hungry, so he’s going to be joining us.”
I did not have a good feeling about this.
I narrowed my eyes on Mrs. F. “He doesn’t know I’m here, does he?”
“Nope.” She pointed at the menu. “Now choose.”
Looking down at the menu, I wondered if I should choose something with peanuts in it and then fake a peanut allergy so I could escape the situation I now found myself in. Then again … it would be a chance to see Caine interact with Mrs. F. I sighed and decided to face his wrath in order to appease my curiosity. “I’ll have the moo shu pork, and a little less matchmaking from you.” I handed her the menu and she burst out laughing. “Mrs. F,” I warned, “you know with our history it’s never going to happen.”
“Call me Effie, dear. And yeah, I thought that too, about your history, I mean,” she admitted, “but you and Caine don’t get what this is all about. He thinks he gets it and you think you get it, but really that’s not why.”
I stared dumbly at her. “That made no sense.”
“It made sense to me.”
Panic transformed into nervous flutters in my stomach. “Please don’t do this.”
Effie patted my shoulder in reassurance. “I would never do anything to make either one of you uncomfortable or upset, but from what I’ve learned from both of you, you’re both dancing around each other and you haven’t really learned a thing about each other that means something. A little time together outside of work will do you both good.”
“He’s very scary,” I pointed out.
She snorted. “To you maybe. To me he’s a sweet, sweet boy.”
My jaw almost dropped at the double use of that adjective. “Sweet? Caine? No, I don’t think so.”
She smiled almost smugly to herself. “You’ll see.”
The minute I heard Effie’s door open, my pulse stopped for a second, and when it restarted it was suddenly going a hundred miles an hour. Effie grinned at me and looked over my shoulder as heavy footsteps drew into the main room from the hall.
They suddenly stopped.
“Effie?”
Huh, so it wasn’t just my name Caine used that warning tone with.
I glanced over my shoulder at him and gave him a little wave. “Hey, boss.”
I was so glad I got the words out before I took in his appearance, because my mouth went dry and my brain stopped processing actual words. Caine was wearing a white T-shirt that sculpted his body. I could see the superb strength in his shoulders and arms. To make matters worse, he was wearing a faded pair of blue-wash jeans that hung on his hips in the most delicious way.
Caine Carraway in a business suit was gorgeous. Caine Carraway out of a suit was sexy as hell.
He also seemed human and normal to me for the first time ever.
Or he would have if he’d stopped scowling at me.
“Caine, come and sit down. Alexa’s joining us for dinner.”
He looked from Effie to me and then back to Effie. “Is that right?” he muttered.
The buzzer from reception sounded in the apartment before anyone could say anything else.
“That’ll be dinner,” Effie said.
“I’ll get it.” Caine strode away, tension stiffening his shoulders.
Once he’d left, I said to Effie, “He’s not happy.”
The older woman just grinned at me.
Caine returned with the takeout, and without saying a word he walked into the kitchen and surprised me by plating up the food and serving it to us. Effie didn’t seem at all shocked by this.
As he correctly guessed that the moo shu pork was mine and placed the plate in front of me he must have felt my burning, questioning stare because he asked quietly, “What?”
“You just did something for me. Me. Another person.”
That familiar scowl returned to his face. “I put food on a plate. Shut it and eat.” He sat down and began digging in to his own sweet and sour chicken and rice.
“Caine, be nice to Alexa,” Effie said, “or you won’t get a piece of the lemon meringue pie I made earlier.”
“There’s lemon meringue pie?” Caine and I asked in unison. We shot a look of displeasure at each other.
Effie laughed.
Suddenly my moo shu pork became very interesting to me.
“How was your day?” Effie asked Caine.
His reply was to give me a wary look as he lifted another spoonful of rice into his mouth.
I almost rolled my eyes. I’d never met a person so concerned about his privacy, and so concerned about keeping me in my place. “Right now I’m not your PA. You can even pretend I’m human.”
Caine looked at Effie but pointed his fork at me. “See? Smart-ass.”
“I think she’s hilarious.” Effie raised her glass of water to me and I smiled in thanks.
“You would,” Caine grumbled in this adorably boyish way that caused a little flutter in my chest.
In order to rid myself of the feeling, I just remembered the start to my day. “Well, if you’re not going to talk about your obviously very busy day, I’ll talk about mine and how my boss had me running all over Boston doing personal errands for him on a Saturday.”
Once more Caine surprised me by substituting a glower for a smirk. “Sounds like you need to get yourself a social life.”
“I see no point in that, considering you’ll just endeavor to ruin it.”
His eyes flicked to me and I saw amusement glittering in them.
The fluttering lowered to my belly and then lower still. Oh boy.
Hoping my attraction wasn’t obvious, I glanced guiltily over at Effie, who was staring at us both with something akin to glee on her face.
Damn it.
Sensing my scrutiny, Effie smoothed her expression and addressed Caine. “I’m going to have to get that idiot carpenter out—the railing in my walk-in has come down again.”
“Don’t.” Caine shook his head. “He’s clearly incompetent. I’ll have a look at it after dinner.”
What? I blinked rapidly. “Did you just … You do DIY?”
“When necessary.”
“And you’re good at it?”
His answer was to stop eating and look across the table at me with no small amount of wickedness gleaming in his eyes. “I’ve always been good with my hands.”
My breath caught.
Heat and tingles of arousal shot through my core.
I was trapped in his gaze and the only way I knew I’d be able to breathe again was by escaping. Somehow I forced my eyes down to my plate and exhaled. “I have no response to that,” I said, nonplussed.
When he didn’t respond I looked back up at him.
Caine was grinning. “You’re having an off day?”
&nbs
p; He must have known the effect he could have on a woman when he did the whole smoldering thing. Sexy jackass. “I’m just tired after all the errand running I did around town today.”
“If that tired you out we need to get your stamina up. You should have been in the gym with me and Henry.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Um, no. The gym and I parted ways a long time ago. I’m in a relationship with Pilates and we’re very happy together.”
“Dancing,” Effie said, “now, that’s exercise and it’s fun. I’ve never seen the attraction in sitting in some smelly gym lifting weights.”
“Hear, hear,” I muttered.
“And then of course there’s sex. Lots and lots of sex.”
Caine’s fork clattered to his plate. He looked vaguely ill.
The snort I was trying to hold back bubbled up out of me and then Effie started cackling with laughter. It was infectious. I couldn’t stop my own from joining hers.
Caine looked from her to me, his lips pinched together. Finally he settled his irritation on me. “I will eat all of the lemon meringue pie,” he warned.
The thought cut off my laughter. “You can’t. Effie won’t let you.”
“Christ.” He shook his head. “You’re on a first-name basis? I’m fucked.”
Effie chuckled, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. “Let me go get that pie.”
His eyes followed her as she disappeared into the kitchen and then he turned his attention to me. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Look, I’m not sure I like you spending time with Effie. She’s like family to me. I don’t want my business life mixing with my personal.”
Some might call me stupid to make myself vulnerable to Caine, but I’d just had one of the best afternoons in a really long time and that was because of Effie. I didn’t want to lose that just when I’d found it. “I really like her,” I said quietly. “I can talk to her.”
Caine’s eyebrows drew together, but not in annoyance. There was curiosity in him. Finally he made me feel less stupid about my honesty. “Okay. Just no talking about me.”
I smiled and crossed my fingers under the table. “Deal.”